Month: September 2022

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An Age-Old Prayer

Friends….

I had written this for the girls I discipled in the Spring of 1997. It remains my prayer for
all of the girls God has brought to me these last 20 years!

Powerful and Loving God, you have loved us and drawn us to yourself. You have shown us your love by paying the price for our sin. We could not pay this debt. May we recognize this spiritual secret! My hope for these women is that they would walk with you for a lifetime. There will be COST. Father, help them choose the harder way. Let them choose to follow when it hurts, when it’s embarrassing and when it divides.
May they not be satisfied with mere contentment in life. Let them SEE the invisible Kingdom…and REACH FOR IT. I ask that they would care more deeply for others than themselves. I pray that sharing the gospel with a lost person would be their life passion. Let them see the urgency! Let them not be distracted by things that promise fulfillment–material things, power and position, and even worse, love of self. Let them choose significance in YOU. Let them be thankful and fulfilled in knowing their identity in you.
I pray that they would read your Word, love it, and honor it by giving it TIME. Let them have honest time with you….not just consistent asking , but consistent worship as well. May they confess sin, KNOWING that the lack of confession can turn them into bitter women . May they cry out to you for immediate help when they are tempted toward sin.
In His POWER and not our own,
tris
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Thankful Tension

     \  Many of us, through prayer groups or messaging each other, have discussed the challenges of PAIN AND SUFFERING in life. Whether  emotional or physical, the issue is not whether or not we will experience pain, but the ACUTENESS of it. Pain is a strange surprise to us….we readily receive the power of God to worship and witness but do not know how to depend upon Him in private trial.

How do you trust God when you cannot see Him? How do you cry out for His help when your heart is in anguish?

How do you lean upon Him as YOUR  intercessor? In His goodness, He gives His Word, His church and  the lives of those who have gone on before us.    

 Personally, it is the lives of those who have ENDURED, not ENTERTAINED who draw me the most. Those who have         been through the jungle of physical trial (and therefore emotional) trial with a soft-hearted determination to grow in Him. They have struggles (in the flesh) with self-pity, anger and pride yet, gained VICTORY (in the Spirit) through humility, brokenness and deep private worship of God.

The lives of Adonirum and Ann Judson of Burma and Robert and Mary Moffit of Africa give me encouragement in their constant commitment to “usefulness”, not necessarily personal fulfillment. How glorious to have our mind expanded to worship God not just for what I ask Him for but because HE is! Can He move? Yes. Can He heal? Yes. Can He change us? Most definitely. May we live in lives of “THANKFUL TENSION” . Tension because we want freedom from pain but thankful because He is and we are allowed to see.

Perhaps this will be the week He will cultivate in us a mind of thankfulness and a yielded heart of patience.

Our worship will be a fragrance to the Creator God who grandly hung the stars in the sky and STILL bends His ear to hear my eager, yet smaller, requests.

Love to you in the One who knows you best,

Tristie